Speaker
Description
Target Normal Sheath Acceleration (TNSA) has been widely recognized as a robust mechanism for proton acceleration, and extensive efforts have been dedicated to enhancing the number of protons, their energy, and the stability of the acceleration scheme, over the past two decades. We propose an approach based on developing specifically designed targets which can facilitate an improved laser absorption. This design aims to enhance the cut-off energy and flux of accelerated protons. The utilization of structured targets comprising a low density carbon foam deposited on a simple Al foil is presented. A much improved proton cut-off energy is demonstrated in experiments carried out with the Gemini Laser System using a Double Plasma Mirror set-up delivering a contrast better than 1010 at a few picoseconds before the peak pulse and with some pre-pulses identified at the ns level.
